Pro-Common Core panelist: ‘The children belong to all of us’

At an event on Friday sponsored by a leftist think tank, former Massachusetts education secretary Paul Reville called Common Core critics a “tiny minority” and asserted that “the children belong to all of us.”

Reville also claimed that opponents of Common Core are against any academic standards, reports CNSNews.com.

“To be sure, there’s always a small voice — and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments — of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability, and those voices get amplified,” Reville declared.

“But those are a tiny minority,” he added.

Reville, a Harvard professor who served as secretary of education under current Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, then bashed federalism and suggested that children are communal property.

“Again, the argument about where it came from I think privileges certain sort of fringe voices about federalism and states’ rights, and things of that nature,” he told CNSNews.

“Why should some towns and cities and states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us?”

Reville also asserted that Common Core is not a federally mandated curriculum, saying “people have voluntarily entered into this agreement.”

The question that caused Reville to go on his collectivist rant concerned the massive amounts of federal money for which states are eligible if they implement the Common Core standards.

The sponsor of Friday’s event was the Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, an adviser to President Barack Obama.

Podesta co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Project. He was also White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton for about three years.

In the fall, 45 states and the District of Columbia began implementing the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which attempts to standardize various K-12 curricula around the country.

The Common Core standards demand that students know certain things by certain grade levels, but do little to describe how teachers should impart those skills.

The standards have been endorsed by numerous groups including the National Governors Association.

Criticism of the Common Core has risen sharply. Opposition has brought together conservatives who are opposed to centralized public education and leftists who deplore ever-more standardized testing.